Turning Point
by Vimbert
Summary: Gig, bored of his mundane life after Revya left for parts unknown, sits around waiting for something to kill just for kicks. Suddenly, a woman with hair just as red as Revya's tumbles through, and the two form an alliance of greed that will rock the planet.


_**A/N: I wrote this over two hours, while drinking heavily, based on the prompt "Lina Inverse and Gig take over the world." Enjoy. No edits have been made (aside from basic proofreading) in order to preserve the original's spirit.**_

Gig stared out at the barren, broken wastes that the world had been reduced to. His silver hair blew in the breeze, and his scythe scraped on the stone of the worn battlement, adding to his frustration. "This is bullshit!" he said. "Sure, we saved the world. What the hell do I get out of it? No more destruction, no more chaos, no more reaping!" He pulled a hotpod out of his pocket and gave it a thoughtful bite. "That's something, I guess." He finished off the delightful morsel and belched. "Damn, things are boring without Revya around to bother." His thoughts drifted to the crimson-haired woman who had changed his life. Where was she now? What was she doing? All he knew was that she had disappeared, saying something in her usual clipped, no-nonsense, caring way that she "had to look for Levin." "What the crispy shit does that mean?" Gig drew his scythe high and glared around, daring for some small woodland creature to emerge from hiding so he could revel in destroying it. Though time and a new body had dulled his skills, he was still the Master of Death.

Nothing presented itself. "Damn. Just another boring day. You and me, scythe... 'til the end of time." He sat back down, glaring at the landscape, as though it itself were responsible for his melancholy. "Fuckin' sand."

Suddenly, a thin slash of magic appeared in the air: a silvery, shimmering thing that seemed to distort the very air around it. "The hell?" Gig muttered, eyeing it with interest. "If I'm lucky, that'll have someone I can fight behind it."

A small woman stumbled out, her cape billowing behind her. She tumbled to the ground, a mess of battle wounds and shuddering breaths, but Gig had eyes for only one thing: her brilliant red hair.

Just like her.

The woman looked around, and upon noticing her surroundings, beat her fists against the very air, as though determined to pinwheel her way into the sky. "Aw, damn it! I knew that spell would be tricky, but another dimension?"

Gig hopped down from the wall. "Well, well, well. What _have_ we here?" He slung his scythe over his shoulder thoughtfully, tapping it occasionally. "You're an odd-looking one."

The woman leapt to her feet, her tiny breasts made very clear by her tight clothing underneath her cape. Gig felt his eyes being drawn to her bejewled necklace; he could tell by the merest glance that it was heavily enchanted. "A mage, are ya?" Gig asked.

"What's it to you? Where the hell am I, anyway? Are you a Monster?" Gig could hear the capital in her voice.

"Well, I've sure been called far worse. And as for where you are... the middle of nowhere. Ain't it a beaut?" He snorted. "I'm guessing you're more interested in where you are in the dimensional sense, but I never was much good at that." He licked his lips. "Just killing."

"Oh, you wanna go then?"

"You're very angry! A real hothead." Gig let out a hearty laugh, a more genuine merriment than he'd felt in ages. "I like that. Last lady I was stuck with took wayyyy too long to learn how to take a damn joke about burning orphans."

Strangely, at this, the woman relaxed and laughed. "Well, if you're this much of a loudmouth, you're probably not interested in a fight. So what are you anyway?" She eyed his clothing. "You look kinda like a peasant, but you talk more like a prince." She paused and closed her eyes halfway, giving him a seductive look. "I like princes."

Gig puffed himself up. "Me? I'm the baddest of the bad, the maddest of the mad, the Master of Death and destroyer of worlds and reaper of souls! I'm Gig, and don't you forget it!" He sealed the deal with some evil laughter. Bitches loved evil laughter.

She turned away, unimpressed. "Well, well, well... sounds like you and someone I know would get along pretty well." She muttered to herself, "At least this one is honest, unlike Xellos..." She turned back to him. "Anyway, what's there to do here? If you're some kinda god—or pretending to be one—you must have _some_ kind of idea what the place is like."

Gig gestured to the blasted wastelands around them. "Whole lotta nothin'. I helped save this rock, and what do I get for it? Jack shit. I hate the hero gig."

To his surprise, she chuckled. "I hear that. I mean, plots to take over the world are kinda cliché and all, but damn, being a hero never seems to pay."

"I know, right? I saved the world, and all I got were these damn hotpods." He pulled one out of his pocket and gazed at it wistfully.

"Hotpods? What are those?" she asked.

"Only the most delicious food you'll ever eat! I'll give you one in exchange for your name, hot stuff." He tossed it to her.

She caught it, marveling at its contours. "Lina Inverse." She took a bite, chewing it over. The minute she swallowed it, a moan of pleasure escaped her throat, a rumbling thing that made Gig stir. "Oh gods, this is delicious."

"Right? They're half the reason I saved this rock. Manna of the gods, right there!" He cackled. "Lina, what brings you here?"

She shrugged after consuming the rest of the hotpod in one bite. "Mistake. You know how magic gets. Anyway, if this world has things like the hotpod, I might just stick around. Could use some more, though." She glanced around, looking for any hotpod plants.

Gig paused. "Sorry, last one I had. You know, Lina... if we took over the world, we'd have all the hotpods we could ever want..."

Lina laughed, throwing her head back and her mosquito-bite breasts forward. "Sorry, but you'll have to do better than that. Evil tries to recruit me an awful lot."

Gig pondered for a moment, then went for the kill. "We'd also have all the money we could want."

"I'm in. Where do we start, boss?"

Gig drank that word in. "Boss. Heh. The last partner I had was always in control, so ready to yank us around whereever she wanted..." He shook his head.

"Sounds like more trouble than she was worth," Lina said.

Gig shook his head and started to walk in a random direction, trusting they'd come across something to conquer eventually. "Maybe. She was... special, though. Only person I've really cared about besides myself."

Lina gave him an inquisitive glare as she followed. "So why aren't you with her now?"

Gig gave his head a troubled shake. "Dunno. Left one day and never came back."

"Maybe she's dead?" Lina offered.

Gig stopped and let out a rumble of a laugh. "Trust me, Lina, I'd know if she bought it. The world would suddenly became a lot more boring if she did."

Lina glanced around at the endless expanses of sand, littered with bones, the remains of past battles, and long-dead settlements. "That's a pretty depressing thought. What is there to take over in this world?"

Gig waved an absentminded hand. "Oh, things. Say, you fly, by chance?"

Lina sprang in the air and stayed there. "A little. Why?"

Gig's grin widened. "An aerial attack is always better, wouldn't you say?"

She nodded, a malicious grin on her own face. "I would say."

After several hours of flight, during which Lina depended on Gig to keep them afloat, as her levitation spell didn't last long, they arrived at a nondescript town, likely inhabited by worthless farmers and peasants going about their daily lives, unfolding a rich tapestry of interpersonal connections and relationships that hurt them at times, but held them together when the going got rough. It was the sort of nothing town where it was clear that although everyone knew that living there sucked, they truly loved their peasant village with all their hearts and would never consider living anywhere else. Were a traveler to come through, he or she would likely thing it no more than a stumbling block in the road, but were said traveler to stay for a week, a month, he or she would realize there was more honesty and emotion here than in any disconnected city. True, not many outside the village knew of the triumph that came from seeing the plucky lad finally win the heart of the unattainable, standoffish priest's daughter, but they didn't care. They had each other and not much else, and that was enough for them.

In short, the kind of place that wouldn't be missed.

Gig hovered over it, ready to dive in, but Lina put a gloved hand on his shoulder. "Wait."

He noted with alarm an electric thrill running through his frame at her touch. Did he really have that much of a thing for redheads? "What?"

"Just watch this." She floated away somewhat, and her brooch and a few other jewels glowed as she began to chant. "_Darkness beyond twilight, crimson beyond blood the flows, buried in the stream of time is where thy power grows." _Her very voice seemed distorted by the magic gathering around her as energy glowed about her. _"I pledge myself to conquer all the foes who stand, before the mighty gift bestowed in my unworthy hands." _Her eyes, heretofore closed in concentration, snapped open with a focus and cold rage that surprised Gig. _"Let all the fools who stand before you and I be destroyed by the power you and I possess! Dragon Slavvvve!" _A ball of energy glowed in her hands, and she unleashed it upon the village.

A thin beam of light shot towards the center of the nothing town, and as it reached the village square, it erupted into a massive explosion that sent body parts and building materials flying. Gig even felt his hair being a little ruffled by the explosion.

Amidst the orgy of destruction, Gig muttered, "I think I'm in love." Not even he would have been so proud as to deny the raging boner that seeing all the death was giving him. Never before had he seen so much destructive power packed into such a tiny creature.

As the blast faded, Lina hovered there, panting from exertion as they glanced down at the broken homes and broken bodies of the worthless farming village they—or rather, Lina—had just destroyed. "Lina," Gig said, "I'm not going to lie to you: that was the most depraved shit I've ever seen. I swear, that was like an orgasm in fire."

Lina swiveled in midair, a grin on her tired face. "You loved it, right?"

"Hell yes! Now let's find a survivor so he can send a message."

They landed amidst the ruin of a school—complete with the still-smouldering remains of some children—and surveyed their surroundings. The devastation from Lina's spell had been absolute: hardly a building remained standing, and a deep crater marked the point of impact—why, Gig could hardly spot any bodies: had he been a betting man, he would have wagered that their skeletons had simply disintegrated if they were too close to ground zero.

After wandering around the ruins of family homes and mud huts for a time, they came across a young man, badly bruised but alive, cradling the steaming remains of a corpse with long blonde hair to his chest. "Why, Wenchy? Why?! What cruel god did this to us? Have the World Eaters come back?"

Gig prodded him in the ass with the blunt end of his scythe. "You're welcome."

The young man, befreckled with auburn hair and a deep gash across his cheek, whirled fearfully to face the twin figures of terror facing him, although Gig thought he and Lina were being awfully casual to genicide. He liked sadism in a woman. "Y-y-y-y-you're..."

"Yep! The one and only Lina Inverse!" Lina said, taking a little bow. Gig noted this with increasing lust; he liked egocentrism in his women as well.

"Why? Why have you done this?" the young man asked, tears flowing down his face.

Gig prodded him with the blunt end of his weapon. "Because it's fun. Why else?"

"You're... you're monsters..."

Lina laughed. "Hardly! We're just greedy, maladjusted people out to make a quick buck. Now why don't you run along and let your lord or whatever know that there's a new sheriff in town?"

He stared, bug-eyes. "You're both completely insane, aren't you?"

Gig shrugged. "It has been suggested. Wanna test it?" He hefted his scythe as Lina grinned.

The young man, for his part, only pissed himself a little and scramlbed away, his footsteps kicking up little clouds of dust along the road.

Lina turned to Gig. "Now we wait?"

Gig barked a laugh. "Why wait?"

* * *

They arrived at the palace a full hour before the young man did. Gig knew the world already, and they'd decided to fuck with the young man just a little more. Suffice to say, it was to the surprise of all present that the two acquaintances materialzed inside the court of the local king.

"G-Gig?" the no-doubt beloved king stuttered. In recent memory, Gig recalled that this area had come under the rule of a wise man who loved all his poor subject equally—much as the land was likely to come under the rule of manipulative despots or tyrants, this man had stood out as a paragon of virtue. Revya's band had always loved coming thorough this area, as desolate as it was—even though Gig was loath to admit it, this was part of the reason why he had lingered in this place for so long. Revya had such a love of justice and peace; he was sure she would return to an area she knew. With a rising irritation, he reasoned that they should have worked out a place for them to meet back up at if this sort of thing were to happen. Still, Gig knew she hadn't died. It simply wasn't possible. Even if she had, a soul such as hers would get kicked right back into the cycle—that bitch upstairs wasn't going to let an engine of destruction that worked for the greater good warm the bench for long.

"Heya, pops. How goes?" Gig asked casually. "We're here to take this throne."

The guards bristled at this, no doubt thinking Gig and Lina two mere travelers who thought they could impress the court with a mere bit of magic. Gig smirked, picturing the carnage to come; he had no patience for fools, unless he was putting an end to their miserable lives.

"They're cute when they think they can do anything, aren't they?" he asked Lina, who chuckled and nodded assent.

What followed was an orgy of destruction, punctuated by Gig laughing like a madman and laying about with his scythe. Meanwhile, Lina burnt anyone to a crisp who came close. Eventually, only the fat, formerly happy king was left, who cowered on a throne that reeked of his own recent piss.

"What... what do you want?" he asked, his fleshy lips quivering with some emotion that Gig could only guess at.

"Nothing, really. Just happened to be in the neighborhood." Gig laughed.

Lina stepped forward. "Actually, we'd like the kingdom to use as a base. We want to control the world, and this place seems like the ideal base of operations. I mean, look at this place!" Lina gestured to the dark basalt walls the building was made out of. "It's like you're begging, 'Hey, wannabe evil overlords! Come take me over so you can have a thematically fitting palace for launching your reign of terror from!'" Before the fat fool could open his mouth, she added, "Yes, I'm sure it's been in your family for hundreds of years or whatever, but come _on!_ Are you really telling me that nowhere along the line has some idiot in black armor ever sauntered along, rambling about the coming destruction and that this place would be perfect for his headquarters?"

Embarrassed, the not-so-wise king turned his head away. "It did always seem strange to me. Father said this was just the way it was, but..."

"So really, we're doing you a favor," Gig said, interrupting some rebuttal the king had no doubt been preparing. "At least we're a little less predictable than most."

"We're predictable in our unpredictability, Gig," Lina pointed out. "You're just out for fun, and I'm in it for the money and attention."

"That is true," Gig admitted. Damn, but he liked the ones with brains.

The king looked between the two of the, utterly confused as to what their locked gazes could mean. "What... what does this mean for me?"

Gig waved a dismissive hand; his eyes never left Lina. "Well, we'll be kicking you out, of course. Go and tell the other kingdoms their time is coming or something. We want to have some hype before us." Gig glanced in his direction and grinned a predatory grin. "As a special bonus, I'll even throw in your personal army that you can keep."

The fat king's eyes widened. "Really?"

Gig bounded forward. "Yep! If you can get to them before Lina and I tell them about how you just pissed yourself on the throne and surrendered your kingdom to a couple of power-hungry egomaniacs, you'll get some free guards!"

As Lina cast a spell to let them sink through to the guard barracks below, Gig regarded the king's horrified face with pleasure. "Good luck."

And so it went, all across the land: kingdoms fell, one by one, to Lina and Gig's relentless assaults, fraught with scare tactics or overwhelming force, depending on the mood they were both in. Soldiers, peasants, and mercenaries alike, whether out of fear or greed, submitted to the pair, increasing their own power. Eventually, the clash would have to happen, Gig reasoned.

Eventually, his beloved Revya would return, and then they could finally be together again.

Lina kept her own counsel on the matter, neither actively seeking his advances nor rebuffing them; Gig got the impression that she had someone of her own, back in her own world. Well, that too was fine. Although Lina shared the same flaming hair, she and Revya couldn't have been more different: attitude, motivation, personality...

Still, there was something about the homicidal sorceress Gig was drawn to; that he couldn't deny. Her easy smile. Her cunning and guile. Her quick wit. Her love of hotpods.

It was unavoidable, then, that Gig felt somewhat conflicted, staring at a massive army led by Revya herself. His time with Lina had been enjoyable, but there was something to be said for the devil you knew. With a chuckle, he realized that both would probably object to being referred to in that way.

"She's the one, huh?" Lina asked, indicating the ever-stoic Revya, staring with a steely gaze.

"Yeah."

"Well, good luck: this is one battle I can't fight for you."

Gig chuckled and stepped forward. As one, the enemy force—mostly formed of former allies and impoverished country folk, Gig noticed with a rare pang of regret—braced and raised their weapons at his approach, no doubt the result of a fierce passion inspired in them from Revya. She didn't look like much, but that woman had one hell of a command over people when she put her mind to it.

She motioned them to stand down with a slight motion of her left hand, a gesture Gig was used to seeing; she thought she could win with words. "So, Gig." Gig reveled in the sound of Revya's voice: it was small, yet carried over the battlefield. It was hard, yet it carressed his ears. The perfect blend of idealism and cruelty, of pragmatism and realism; Gig supposed he had only himself to thank for such qualities coming out in her. "Why?"

As usual, she had gotten straight to the point. "Because you left, kid," Gig said, noting with shame his voice cracking. "I figured, I busted things up enough, you'd show up again." A weak smile lit up his face. "Guess I was right."

Lina snorted behind him, readying a spell in case things went south. Revya, for her part, smiled a wan smile. "That's it, Gig? Boredom?" She shook her head. "I'm disappointed in you." Gig felt his immortal heart skip a beat. "I thought after our time together that you'd changed, yet I leave you alone for two seconds and you resort to what? Bullying others to get your kicks?" She drew her onyx blade, the one that had been his prison for a hundred years. "I'm sorry it's come to this."

"Revya... just promise me you'll never leave. That's all I want." Gig let sincerity play over his face, showing true emotion for a rare moment. "This one might say otherwise," he said, indicating Lina, "but all I wanted was to see you again. I didn't even know where you'd gone."

"I have to live my own life, Gig. I'm sorry, but I can't be there all the time."

Gig stumbled back, as though struck. "Why, Revya? Why?"

Revya chuckled. "It's my nature to always be on the move. Always seeking something new."

Gig sighed and picked up his scythe from the dust of the ground. "And it's in my nature to always destroy. ...Sorry it came to this, kid."

With their armies and allies at their backs, the two estranged partners came together in an embrace of magic and fire, and the fate of the world was decided.


End file.
